Factory Girl

Director: George Hickenlooper
Screenwriter: Captain Mauzner
Starring: Sienna Miller, Guy Pearce, Hayden Christensen
Running time: 91 minutes
Certificate: 15

Edie Sedgwick (Sienna Miller) is a decadent socialite and model who became embroiled in Andy Warhol’s (Guy Pearce) art-making world of the Factory - a converted hat factory and gathering place for the artist’s entourage and their drug fuelled ‘happenings’ - in 1960s New York. At first, Warhol indulges his muse making her the star of his movies, a media darling and the toast of the Manhattan party scene. But when a friend introduces her to a politically minded musician (Hayden Christensen), the antithesis of Warhol’s self-indulgent world, the Factory set begin to reject her, as does her rich family, and the ‘poor little rich girl’s’ world begins to grow darker.

Miller’s much-hyped performance is serviceable, managing to sympathetically show the troubled nature of Sedgwick’s psyche, her privileged but neglected upbringing woven into her hedonistic party lifestyle. The darker elements of the Factory scene are at times uncomfortable viewing, but you can’t help feeling that by painting her as a victim, this movie is only half the story, and her demise can not solely be blamed on Warhol or the Factory set. She was clearly a damaged soul way before she met Warhol.

Pearce, not instantly recognisable under heavy facial prosthetics, plays a beautifully cold and cruel performance as the famous artist. Initially infatuated with Sedgwick, not least her wealth and social status, they are inseparable at first. Though ultimately he views her as disposable, much like his art, saying after her death: “I hardly even knew her at all.” With any film depicting an element of Warhol’s life, there is a level of pretension that needs to be indulged to evoke the ‘scene'. Director Hicklelooper certainly manages that. Captain Mauzner’s script also jars slightly in places, and on occasion the characters appear a long way from reality, but then maybe that’s the point.

The film makers point out the movie is not entirely based on actual events, which with a biopic-style film, it makes one asks, ‘what’s the point?’ Christensen’s ‘musician’, who Sedgwick has an intense relationship with, is a prime example of this. His character bares an uncanny resemblance to Bob Dylan, (Dylan apparently asked for his name to be removed from the film.) The point of his character, if not a real person, is all a bit trite, representing the polar opposite of Warhol: indulgent, self-absorbed and materialistic. Sedgwick is torn between the two worlds, but fits in neither because of her ‘old money’ background, and her reluctance to choose between them is the shown as the defining moment that sends her off the deep end.

Though it’s no masterpiece, Factory Girl is a visually engaging and watchable movie, and will certainly give Miller some of the media attention her character seemed to live for.
















































Almost there! This week's clueword can be found in a review of Take That's comeback album